Time to kill off Caps Lock? It's a campaign

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Do we really need that Caps Lock key? Pieter Hintjens thinks it’s time to scrap it altogether, and has launched the CAPSoff campaign to get something done about it.

The Caps Lock key is blamed for all sorts of things, like people SHOUTING online (I tend to just keep the little finger on my left-hand pressed down on the Shift key when I want to SHOUT but maybe I’m just a freak) – people trying to scam you by email (apparently many of them SHOUT though the nice spam messages I’ve received have all been in lowercase) – and die-hard programmers who use archaic (80s) languages that only work with uppercase characters.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with it. It sits to the left of my keyboard, and if I press it, a little green light comes on. Sweet.

But I’m obviously too nice, because Hintjens takes another view on his blog. "The Caps key is an abomination. It’s a
huge key, stuck right there where the Ctrl used to be, and as far as I
know, it’s only used by 419 scammers and Fortran programmers."

Whoa there. An abomination? Steady on.

He continues: "Obviously the keyboard producers have been so indoctrinated that they
don’t even inspect their own products any longer," Hintjens writes.
"Listen, dudes: No one wants that crummy Caps key. It’s history."

Is this an issue worth getting worked up about? I’ll leave that to you to decide. If you want to join the cause, visit the CAPSoff blog. If not, then just be careful over on the left-most extremities of your keyboard.